Paladins champions of the realm review năm 2024

Recently throughout October people have been getting understandably upset with Activision Blizzard over the release of the highly anticipated Overwatch sequel which turned out into one of this year's biggest game launch day disasters. Like the amount of people commenting on social media pages about how broken, buggy and just how unplayable Overwatch 2 really is and that it locks people of the game because you need some kind of paid mobile phone number added to your battle.net account to even play it, stabbing us in the heart even further was locking certain heroes behind a Battle Pass on top of the terrible progression and migration system. I mean how Activision Blizzard? How do you take Overwatch that you made a huge massive success with, earn a reputation as a huge competitive Esports game, only to then shut down servers for the game in launch for the sequel which ruined everything that made the original game fun and enjoyable.

Rather than go in depth or even make myself talk about Overwatch 2 in the most horrible current state it is in or about what is happening with Activision Blizzard instead I am going to be talking about one of the games that I have been playing recently and that is Paladins Champions of the Realm a Team Based First Person Shooter with MOBA elements developed by Evil Mojo Games. People dub this game as an Overwatch clone because people think that games that have a system with multiple characters with different abilities that suit a different playstyle is considered an Overwatch clone when in reality Paladins takes influence from games like Team Fortress 2 and also the dev team's own game SMITE which is also a MOBA based game. It does play very similarly to Blizzard's Hero Team Based Shooter and also like another game from Gearbox's Battleborn which that game I did a review on as well.

So, Paladins is a multiplayer focused shooting game where two teams of five players compete for an objective with multiple different characters that has their own abilities that change up how you play. Each character is divided between five different class types that represent each champions combat style, these are Damage that favour all out damage, there is Frontline that focuses on providing covering fire in front of every other player, there is Flank who focus on indirect offense by using abilities to surprise enemies from the rear and lastly there is Support who offers healing and more protective abilities for their allies. You got a guy named Victor who has an assault rifle and can sprint, aim down sights and throw grenades making him play like a soldier style character but all other characters can't sprint and have their own abilities to avoid incoming damage. You also have a big buff guy with a shotgun, you have someone with a flaming sword that shoots fire, you have a sniper who can also bring out a pistol if needed, one-character pilots a combat mech with two miniguns and missile barrages, there's a character with a flame thrower who also uses a shield to protect allies and also a character who can temporally turn invisible for a brief time. The line-up of characters that Paladins offers is varied and offers up different unique ways that change how you play, not to mention some of them just look cool including how their weapons look.

Speaking of looks Paladins is a good-looking game running on the Unreal Engine. It tries to go for a somewhat cartoony look and artstyle and while it is not the most impressive the detailed environments and character models that go along with the game's fantasy setting do get the job done. It has nice flashy looking abilities being unfolded on the screen and it is nice to watch each character use their special attack abilities and see each ability cloud up the battle arena. Each character's weapon looks like it really suits their combat style and personality and it suits the fantasy setting. The soundtrack suits the action and feeling of the game and it is pretty cool to listen to. The game is able to run really well and maintain a really smooth framerate especially when there is a lot of stuff going on the screen at once making it for fantastic multiplatform optimization especially for the consoles. I did have several game crashes both in menus and also during gameplay where it just suddenly happened, some of these are likely due to bugs that occur from time to time.

Holding the line together as a team.

Gameplay in Paladins is broken up between three different gamemodes, these are Onslaught, Team Deathmatch and Siege. Team Deathmatch is your basic gamemode where one team has to score the highest number of kills before the opposing team does whereas Onslaught and Siege are more objective based gametypes. In Onslaught teams attempt to take over the control point located on the map and defend it while having people inside the control point to score points to win the match. There's also a King of the Hill variant where the control point occasionally moves to a different spot on the map to ensure that everybody keeps moving. Siege is a game mode where teams have to gain control of the control point on the map and hold out till the payload has spawned onto the map, whichever team spawns the payload has to carry the payload to the enemy team's base while the opposing team has to try and halt the payload's advance. When one team earns four points through taking the control point and successfully taking the payload to the enemy base first wins the match. Both Onslaught and Siege are lengthy games that offer up loads of chaotic fights while Team Deathmatch is a simple quick matches that goes by very quickly. The main gamemodes are pretty fun, chaotic and enjoyable enough but also occasionally there are also some temporally game modes that people can partake in which have different sets of game rules compared to the main modes but I never found myself playing any of those. I just stuck to playing the three main modes and I got a lot of enjoyment playing those game modes alone.

Each character you play has their weapon style and with three different abilities that a character can in corresponding to your main weapon and with each use you have to wait for a cooldown before you can the ability you just used before again. Every character has an ultimate ability that charges up overtime but getting kills boosts it up, when the ultimate meter is charged up you do an ultimate attack that can deal massive to anyone unfortunate to be caught in the blast accompanied by the character's echoed scream that lets every player in the match know that an ultimate is being used. Using an ultimate ability at the right time can turn the tides of a battle like when one team is struggling and one player uses his/her ultimate to regain ground of the fight. The gameplay and control do play similar to Blizzards Shooter Overwatch but Paladins does have a few things other games don't, first is a mount which spawns automatically during Onslaught and Siege and it is transport that gets you to the objective quickly, second it has an item shop system where you earn credits during the match and can spend it on temporally upgrades for your champion. These temporally item boosts range from reduced cooldown on abilities, faster charge for your ultimate, being able to absorb health with each damage you land on an enemy, being able to do more damage to turrets if a player picks a character who can place turrets down, faster movement speed and so on and you can have up to four abilities per match and they can be upgraded further to increase effectiveness. Another thing that this game adds is a loadout system where you can edit a character's card deck loadout which allows you to customize your characters in a variety of different ways which either improve their combat abilities damage output or cooldown on them by picking five cards from a deck of abilities that you can chose from. At the start of each match each player picks one of three-character talents that a character has available, which changes how a character is handled with one talent only being available when you first start using a new character.

When it comes to the gameplay side Paladins relays on teamwork alongside making use of flanking from either the side, behind or above while coordinating with the team by storming the front line as well. If characters are injured you can either rely on health regeneration or by having a available support healer use their healing abilities. You have a special chat system that allows you to use quick shout outs to your team to either contest the objective of letting your team know that you are going to attack from a different side. Going solo might work a few times in some matches if against one maybe two enemies if you have the skill but try that against a squad that is fairly spaced out and coordinating, you'll die rather quickly or get surprise attacked when you'd least expect it. Successfully spacing out, coordinating with your team by attacking together and using the right abilities at the right time as well as using dodges to back away when needed are the keys to winning in Paladins. Mic chats are also encouraged as well assuming that you are a good communicator and have a good microphone headset.

With a large list of characters to play as you are bound to find a couple that are your favorite to play as.

Choosing the right characters is also a key element in the game as well because each and every character has their own set of abilities that suit a different playstyle as explained before and there are plenty of characters that is bound to be suited to your playstyle. Want to focus on direct damage you can pick a character that focuses on damage with damage focused abilities, want to protect allies from the front you can pick a character that can pull up a shield to block most of the incoming direct damage from attacking enemies, want to heal allies than you can pick a character that has healing abilities to ensure that your other teammates are staying alive. Every character you play also has different amounts of health, which is another important thing to take into consideration. It makes sense that a heavily armoured guy can take more punishment than a regular solider type character can because you know shields and all that alongside an acid spewing dragon while a flying witch has way less health than others and has to be super careful around combat. Getting used to the characters and how they work in combat does take a fair bit of time but after several matches you do get the rhythm of knowing how each character works and there will always be a character that is perfect for you that you can use a main.

I do like how the damage is played out like if it is like an RPG where you see damage numbers pop up on top of every character has a big number of Health Points when damage is inflicted and I also some abilities can even inflict status effects like reduced healing, burn which causes damage over time and also temporally freezing a player still in his/her tracks.

Now let's talk about some of the issues with the game, unlike other team based shooting games that offer multiple class options they offer the ability to change characters during the match, like if you weren't doing good with a character you just picked you could change and switch to a character you're familiar with to counter what characters the enemy is using which is helpful for turning a difficult fight over, something that Overwatch has and was something that made Overwatch easy to get the hang off. With Paladins, while I like that the game reminds you that when picking characters, it lets you know that you might want to have a support character or even a frontline character with you if a party lacks a character from any of the available classes. However this game doesn't give you options for switching out characters during a match meaning that if you pick the wrong character, pick one that you're not doing well with or if your team doesn't have a frontline, or a flank character or support character than your team is unbalanced and you have no choice but to stick with whoever you picked all the way through the match and it can be problematic especially if you are paired with people online who don't strategize and just go for all out with brute force, same for picking out talents. Battleborn, a game which I reviewed before, also suffered with this issue as well and it was also problematic in that too that you couldn't switch characters during a match. I assume that they have done this because of the progression system but it is a shame that you won't be able to freely switch characters on the fly to counter against other characters that are used by other players.

Not being able to switch to counter against certain characters is a deal because the character balancing is all over the place with some characters. There are good characters that you can get used to and have about 2000 to 3000 Health and aren't too difficult to take down assuming that you are working together, but then there are characters that are just an absolute pain to fight against because of how overpowered they can be. Moji for instance is a wizard who rides on his lizard familiar and his lizards shoots out fireballs in rapid succession and his fireballs do so much damage that as soon as his first fireball hits you consider yourself dead because there is little you can do to get out of the way or avoid it unless you're using a character that has a shield that can block it. Another character I hate having to fight against is Raum who is some big demon with minigun and he just has way too much health than he should have combined with a shield that builds up takes forever even with multiple players attacking it making him an absolute nuisance to take down. Some support characters have more health than some damage or flank characters and I just think that doesn't make that much sense especially when a buffed-up guy with two uzi submachine guns has less health than a female character does.

There isn't much variety with the maps either, don't get me wrong the maps do look fantastic and are nicely layout and do fit the fantasy setting but there are only like 10 maps available to play on currently. The updates did take some old maps and rework them to make them look new and the redone maps aren't too bad but this game could do with some more maps.

Still though even with the bugs and some balancing issues with some of the characters the developers at Evil Mojo have made some extensive updates to the game, fixing major bugs and trying to balance out characters and years after the game's full release the developers are still committed to supporting the game. On top of fixing bugs and balancing they would then add new characters to play as well and as of the day I am reviewing this game there are over 58 characters and the roster is still climbing which I truly need to give a lot of praise for.

Now let's talk about the microtransaction situation that this game has. Now Paladins is a free-to-play game where you first log in to the game, create an account and then you start playing right away without any kind of hindrance or other stupid requirements wherever you are playing on console or PC. However, when you first start playing you have only a small number of characters to play as and you have to unlock the the other characters with ingame currency options that are gold or crystal. Gold is earned through completing matches while crystals are special currency which you can spend real life money on. On top of unlocking the characters each of them has varying amounts of skins, mounts, sprays and emotes that you can customize each of your characters with alongside items like frames, announcer packs, avatar icons and so on that you can decorate your account profile with. If you are looking to go the spending money route than you are bound to spend upwards of over £50 to about £150 or more just to get the whole character roster including any of the new characters, they add in which a way too much for what this game has on top of a season pass that you can purchase also which gives you exclusive customization items. Every character has a skin that affects overall appearance as well as a seperate weapon skin and you can mix and match how you like them. Some of the skins I won't like do look cool though and some of the more legendary skins are fantastic and worth showing to other players online plus there are really good seasonal skins that you can also get your hands on. If for reasons you can't get your hands on the majority of skins you can use limited one-time use boost items that allow you to try the skins out especially some skins that might not be available anymore which is pretty nice. Now you can unlock a new character through earning enough gold through playing enough matches but unless you are willing to spend a couple of hours a day to do that you are going to notice that it is very grindy even when unlocking the cheapest characters. Characters can cost from about 15000 gold or 100 crystals to unlock while other characters can cost about 60000 gold or 300 crystals max to unlock which is absurd. Now there are ways of making the grind easier, you can watch a bunch of free licensed advertisement videos a day for a quick and easy 5000 or more gold earned alongside some free crystals and a chest if you are lucky. If you have people in your friends list you can exchange gifts with each other which unlock some stuff for both you and your buddy. There are simple daily quests that you can do for a couple of gold and XP and also there is the Trials of the Realm which is basically a series of different challenges that you can do with each of the characters and doing these actually do help speed up the grinding process for you to get the next character you want. There is also a battle pass that you can get with each season which gives you access to more exclusive skins and in game currency if you level it up. So, it is not a Pay-To-Win game because the characters you start with can be just as effective as all of the characters that are unlockable just as long as you get used to how each character handles. If you do want to get the characters without needing to play dozens of matches, be spending real money on them it is nice that the game offers you the option as well as offering quick and easy ways of earning gold and crystals. I was able to get a good amount of the characters in the game without needing to spend a single penny on the game thanks to advertisements, boosting items and also doing all kinds of daily quests and other challenges which aren't challenging nor too easy either.

The game has multiple customization options for your characters that suit your tastes.

I managed to get the chance to try all of the characters and as of the October 2022 update, I have a couple of characters that I do rotate with from time to time. First up my first main is Victor a solider type character who is good at all round damage with his assault rifle and grenades and whenever he is taken, I go for Tyra as a substitute because her gun fires nade launcher rounds as well as throwing fire bombs which explode upon impact and also deals damage over time. My other damage main I have been using is one of the new characters that was added in a update Betty La Bomba which she uses a grenade launcher but can also fire out a cluster grenade shot, use explosives to make herself jump to a higher ledge and also throw a box out which tosses several explosives upon anyone unfortunate to be caught in the barrage making her the best damage dealer. My main flank character is Androxius for his cool looking magnum revolver which really good damage, can reflect damage back at the enemy and also uses a Falcon Punch. My main frontline character I use sometimes when I feel like it is Ruckus for his mech's miniguns and being able to bring out the big guns on a whole group of enemies. Lastly the main support character I use is Grohk who uses a Lightning Staff and has a talent where you use it to heal an ally alongside using his totems to heal everybody around them making him an enjoyable healer to use in combat.

Now I did enjoy the online matches as they were tense, whenever I am playing online, I always try to use two of my best mains that I use often. The online play is really good, game crashes aside I didn't experience any lag or delay although connecting to matches took long because I am in the UK playing on European servers. Matches were quick and tense and players at this point know all of the maps back to front and while it is difficult to get matches going, there are still some dedicated players playing today. Outside of the main modes there is the Ranked Multiplayer which unlocks if you unlocked enough characters and this mode plays like Siege but with options to ban characters from being used in a match, which is great if you hate certain characters being used. If you do find the online matchmaking too much you can team with allies against a team of AI bots and this game does a fantastic job handling the bot AI. While they don't always use the best tactics or use advantage points, they are really good at team coordination, use every character available and also make use of every ability they have and can provide a reasonable challenge especially if you are put in a full team of AI bots. Good thing is that if you are going to be working on grinding out gold, want to level up your characters or to work on the achievements/trophies that the game has it is actually a lot easier to do matches against the AI as supposed to challenging real players plus you do get some daily gold earned from playing the bot AI matches anyway. The AI is fairly balanced without them being too easy or too difficult to take down and I actually do spend a fair chunk of the time doing the bot AI matches.

At the current build Paladins has enjoyable game modes that are fun with both players around the world and also against bot AI, the mechanics are easy enough to get the hang of and also there are plenty of different characters that suit a player's playstyle. It offers microtransactions like all other of these free-to-play games but it is not pay-to-win and it is nice that you have multiple options to pay money for the characters or grind your way through to get them. Some character balancing is off in some places and there may not enough map variety but Paladins is an incredible team-based shooting game with tons of depth, great support from the developers and many different ways that you customize your characters. If you ever want to abandon Overwatch but want to play a version of it that isn't made by a game company full of complete greedy, incompetent, manipulative and horrid people that mistreats their own employees or force everybody to have paid mobile phone numbers to be able to play one of their newest games online than you should look no further than to become a champion of the realm with Paladins an engaging free-to-play MOBA game still being enjoyed today.

Who is the strongest champion in Paladins?

Androxus: Androxus tops the Paladins tier list most of the time due to his ability to be an excellent flank. He has fantastic mobility and great damage output. It's everything you could want. He's also been possibly the most consistent character and is a very safe choice even when you aren't sure of the meta.

Is Paladins Champions of the Realm free?

Paladins: Champions of the Realm is a 2018 free-to-play online hero shooter video game by Hi-Rez.

What age is Paladins suitable for?

According to PEGI, Paladins® is suitable for players aged 12 and above.

Why is Paladins rated T?

Parents need to know that Paladins: Champions of the Realm is a free-to-play multiplayer online team shooter that's downloadable for Windows-based PCs. It contains constant cartoon violence where firearms, rockets, and other explosives are used to eliminate opponents, although no blood's shown. Female…